Iraq

IRAQ

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I listened earlier to the Senator from Missouri talking about the State of affairs in Iraq. I would like to comment on that very briefly.

If I understood his argument, he said that 6 months after hostilities had ended—at least the military operation as the President described it, and after the efforts of different inspectors and the expenditure of millions of dollars—he believed the fact that Dr. David Kay couldn't produce any evidence whatsoever of weapons of mass destruction did not reflect on statements made by this administration before we invaded Iraq. I think that is clearly wrong.

This has been declassified. We said we knew of 550 sites of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we invaded—550 of them. Doesn't it stand to reason that these inspectors would go to those sites first to find the weapons of mass destruction? Isn't it revealing that they have come up with no evidence whatsoever? What a tremendous breakdown in intelligence gathering—that 550 suspected sites have now turned up to be virtually empty, with no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. How hard a stretch of the imagination is it to think Saddam Hussein, facing an invasion of forces from America and Great Britain, was very cautiously packing into vans all of the weapons of mass destruction and spiriting them out of his country? I don't think that stands to reason.

That is almost as hard to follow as the President's logic yesterday which said that the terrorism and carnage going on in Iraq today is proof positive of the progress we are making. The progress?

Frankly, these sad reports from Iraq evidence the fact that we have not established order in that country to a level where we can assure the people of Iraq, or our troops for that matter, that they are going to be in a safe situation. I have not called for us to cut and run. I do not know many who have. We have to stay the course. We are now there.

As it has been said, when you go into a gift shop, the sign says "If you break it, you own it." We went into Iraq and took control of that situation. Now we are responsible for creating a stable and secure environment, and it will be a great cost over a lengthy period of time.

Just last week, I joined with my colleagues visiting Walter Reed Hospital to meet with some of the wounded soldiers.

I say to those who are stunned to hear each day that we have lost a soldier, or two or three soldiers, not to take lightly those who are wounded. Many of the wounds of these soldiers are grievous. I met one soldier from Ohio who lost the sight in one eye and another soldier from Illinois who had been the victim of a mortar round and is going to struggle to ever walk again. I think he will, but it will be a tremendous struggle and a lot of rehabilitation. To say we have only lost one, two, or three soldiers a day—please look at this in the context of the lives lost and the lives that are seriously injured and diminished by the injuries that are suffered there.

We have to stay the course. Frankly, I find it unfathomable that this conference committee of appropriations yesterday refused to stand behind 23,000 Federal employees who have been activated in Guard and Reserve units, refused to say we will stand with their families and make certain they don't go through economic hardship during the activation period when they are risking their lives for America. Unfortunately, this conference committee walked away from those soldiers yesterday. That is shameful, and it is something we never should have done. I urge my colleagues to think long and hard about this partisan rollcall, which, frankly, reversed a 96-to-3 vote of just a few weeks ago.

I will close by saying it is unfortunate we cannot finish the Foreign Operations appropriations bill today. It is my understanding that the DeWine-Durbin amendment for $289 million for the global AIDS epidemic, which we believe has a sufficient number of votes on the Senate floor to pass, has been threatened by one Republican Senator from Oklahoma who has said he will filibuster the bill and stop the bill on the Senate floor.

We are coming to the close of this session and we need to pass appropriations bills. Threatened filibusters from either side—particularly from the majority side—are not appropriate at this time. I hope that Senator will reconsider.

I yield the floor.